The Janitor On Mars

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It’s the year 2049, and Earth receives a telecast from the janitor on Mars, a robot that describes the rise and fall of life on his planet, and how the Earth will come to an end. The robot, trip-wired to make contact at a certain time, invites a newscaster and a group of scientists, artists, and fashion models to meet him on Mars. Only adults are allowed to watch the telecast, and the boys at Shepherds Lodge, the last nonprivatized orphanage in England, are taken to the beach. Timmy, an eleven-year-old with severe learning disabilities who has been raped by an unknown assailant three days earlier, stays behind in the infirmary. Pop Jones, the janitor of Shepherds Lodge, suspects that Timmy’s rapist was the principal, Mr. Davidge, but Timmy is inarticulate. The janitor on Mars tells the visitors from Earth about the history of Mars, a planet much like Earth. Martian civilization flourished for almost three billion years, reaching its apotheosis five hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs were still ruling the Earth. The Martian population divided arbitrarily, into two sides and fought massive, thermonuclear wars, among themselves and against other planets. After discovering that they themselves were mere simulations in a deterministic computer universe, the Martians decided to launch a surprise attack on the galactic core. They faked auto-annihilation and worked underground on weaponry based on false vacuum. Poised to form the forbidden configuration, matter was instructed to destroy itself, and all life on Mars was extinguished in a trillionth of the speed of light. That was four hundred and fifty-seven million years ago. The robot theorizes that Earth’s science and politics are naturally though brutally depressed in order to foreground its art. “Your scientists had no idea what to look for or where to look for it, but your poets, I sometimes felt, divined the universal,” he says.. The robot was built to be set off on September 30, 2048, when a series of seemingly minor geophysiological events conspired to raise the oxygen in the atmosphere to a level where even lighting a match will spark a holocaust. And an asteroid the size of Greenland is due to hit the Iberian Peninsula at ninety miles a second in 2069. But the robot’s trip-wire didn’t activate until it was already too late. After watching the telecast, Pop Jones, astonished and reaffiliated with everyone else on Earth, visits Timmy, who tells him that it was the principal who raped him. “Hush there,” Pop Jones says. “Hush.”